Mother's Day, Easter, Carrie's Birthday

It’s been crazy around here.  Too much to do! In the last 3 days I have been on six planes in the states of Kentucky, Ohio, Minnesota (all 3 days), California and Iowa.  Sheesh! I am earning those frequent flier miles! Carrie’s birthday was on Friday so we celebrated Thursday night last week. She turned the ripe old age of 28.  She’s looking better than ever in case you were wondering.  Right before she blew out the candles, with Quinny’s help of course, I think I heard her wish for twins.  I don’t know about that but I guess it’s the fastest way to four kids.  Carrie’s parents came over and we grilled out and I took a stab at making a cake.  I was supposed to meet up with some friends at the Kentucky Derby but ultimately pushed my flight back a day (greatest husband ever) so we could all celebrate.  Since I had an accidental day off I volunteered to make a cake.  Carrie asks if I have ever baked on before.  Um, no, I haven't had a lot of occasions to bake cakes so to my knowledge this was my first stab.  Everything was going pretty well until the frosting came into play.  Keep in mind I’m making this thing from scratch.  I read the recipe and start making it and right away I know I screwed it up.  The frosting had the consistency of water, not a good sign.  Carrie comes home from picking up the boys and I’m pretty despondent.  I really wanted to succeed and didn’t want her to have a hand in baking her own cake but I was clearly beat. The kitchen was definitely winning so in a defeated state Care took a crack at it.  Um, same result.  Am I saving a little face here?  We are now out of powdered sugar and butter so we need Carrie’s mom to pick up some more on the way over.  After everyone’s two cents it’s clear the recipe is incorrect.  We get corrected and the cake turned out to be quite delicious.  A successful family birthday! 

For her birthday the boys and I gave Carrie an iPhone and now we sit on the couch and text each other in between playing games on that amazing toy instead of talking to each other.  Clearly, the secret to a long successful marriage is as much electronic communication as possible.  Speaking of long relationships our anniversary is coming up tomorrow. 23 years!  We are totally making it.  Whaoo! 

We celebrated Easter with my folks in Lake Geneva this year.  It was a nice time with the family. My sister and her two kids along with Quinny went on an Easter egg hunt.  Each child had his or her own specially colored eggs and it worked our pretty well.  There was minimal fighting and stealing of eggs.  It was a nice time had by all.  All the kids got a nice sugar rush and then all the parents go a nice sugar crash.  Kerplunk!  Those crashes are brutal but so it goes.

During the Easter festivities my mom taught Quentin how to pee standing up.  Hey! I thought that was my job!  He was in the bath and alerted grandma that he had to go.  No time for a potty chair!  It's time to man up.  Quinny is excelling better than we could have imagined.  He has his accidents now and then but finds a bathroom better than 95% of the time.  We need to remind him pretty often to remember to go but a lot of times he just takes care of it on his own.  He’s more or less already ditched his potty and uses the big boy toilet full time.  I’ve been very impressed.  We still throw a diaper on him at night, but he wakes up dry probably 40-50% of the time so we are moving into pull-ups and then on to hopefully irregular bed wetting!  I’m proud of my little guy.  Those M&M’s are a very powerful motivator.  And fruit snacks!  The kid loves the fruit snacks.  When he got some in his Easter basket, which was found downstairs he felt the instinctive need to immediately take the pack, march upstairs and put them back in the package in the pantry.  Hilarious!!

Gavin is moving right along and is gaining so much personality.  He loves his big brother and anytime Quinny gets near him Gavin will start cracking up.  We have some great interactions on the video camera.  He’s sitting up and getting ready to crawl.  He exercises those legs pretty good. Still no teeth, though.  He finally got his own bed and we are working on getting him to sleep through the night.  The boys have a jack and jill bathroom they share between their bedrooms so if one of them is screaming the other will wake up but it’s fairly rare.  We are still getting up every day between 4:30 and 5:30, which is getting old.  I mean it’s been roughly three years of the early wake up call.  I’m used to getting 3-4 hours of sleep but wouldn’t mind moving that wake-up call to 7:30.  I'm sure it's worse for Carrie but we try not to compare notes on who is getting less sleep.  There is another tip on a successful marriage - don't dwell on the negatives.  Focus on the positives.  We have two boys! Yipee!

Mother’s day was a bit of a non-event over at our house so I have to make that up to the best mom ever for Care.  We were both traveling home.  Carrie was coming home with the boys from a weekend with friends in Minneapolis and me from the Derby.  By the way that Derby is quite the event.  There were 165,000 people in attendance and the people-watching alone, make it an event worth attending.  If I could just get to a Super Bowl my sports’ bucket list would be nearly complete.  I need to sneak a final four in there too.  By the time we were all home it was around 5pm and everyone was crabby and exhausted.  We made the best of it and promised to do better next year.  Carrie hasn’t had a good run.  I think last year she had morning sickness, the year before some sort of tragedy took place so one of these years we will get it right.  Next year maybe we’ll celebrate in Hawaii. 

I would write about how awful I’ve been about the blog but that’s getting old every post.  We are contemplating shutting it down.  What do you think?  Are people still reading it?  I figure if I can get out a post or two every week it may not be worth doing it.  Leave a comment if you think we should keep it.  I hope everyone had a great couple of holidays!